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February 5, 2013

I know some of you have been waiting for this so here is the DIY on the marquee light sign Nicholas made for our shop! This was a really fun project. We looked at getting it custom made with real metal but the cost was about $2,000. After I showed Nick the DIY from Jordan, Nick did some of his own research and found this DIY from Crafts Unleashed and decided he'd try to make it himself.

Supplies:

- 12" Cardboard letters

*we bought ours here at Joann's so we could pick them up right away instead of wait

for shipping. they happened to be on sale for $2.99 but if yours aren't on sale, don't forget

to use a coupon for extra savings! If you don't have a Joann's near you, the letters

First you're going to take a straight edge and cut out along the edge of the letter.

You can cut out right to the edge but Nick left a little border as you can see from the photos.

All cut out! Nick took the blade and cleaned up the edges of all of the letters too.

Flip the letter over and now you're going to do the bulb placement.

Figure out your bulb spacing and draw a circle for the placement.

Then drill the holes. Nick used 5/16 drill bit (which was the biggest one he has) but it was not quite large enough, he had to make the holes a bit larger after he did the drilling. So if you have a bigger drill bit, go with that!

Spray paint all your letters. Spraying the back is not necessary.

All sprayed!

Now place the bulb through your drilled holes and attach the string.

It depends on the letters (since some letters have more bulbs)

but Nick said you can do about 2-3 letters per 1 box of lights (1 box is 25 bulbs)

To hang up our letters, Nick drilled holes in the wall and used light strings to hang the letters. He also used the cardboard we sprayed on as a template for the wall. Nick tucked all the extra string in the back. Since they have hooks attached to the lights, it made it pretty easy to hide all the extra wire.

That's it! Nick is a real diy'er, He also made the checkout table in the photo above too! In total we spent about $150 on this project! As much as having real metal would have been cool, I'll take spending $150 over $2000 any day ;) Obviously for this many letters it was pretty time consuming but a rewarding end result! If you are just doing your initials or something, it'll go a lot faster. Hope you have fun with this project.

If you do try out this project, I'd love to see how it turned out! Maybe try a color for the letters (I should have done YELLOW! ;) they don't have to have the metal look. Or you could try it with the 8" letters which would be cute. Anyway, if you have any questions about this DIY, just let me know!

Love this! Thanks for the tutorial... It would be so cute to do initials for a wedding. I an't wait to see more photos from the shop opening. I'm in the ventura area, so I'm sure ill make my way down to Fullerton one of these days

Love this! Thanks for the tutorial... It would be so cute to do initials for a wedding. I an't wait to see more photos from the shop opening. I'm in the ventura area, so I'm sure ill make my way down to Fullerton one of these days

This is kind of genius. I was so impressed by it on IG and totally assumed you special ordered those lights and that they were metal! I love that you were able to make this out of cardboard letters. SO good. I think you just opened up a whole world of possibilities for my marquee craving self!

Woo! Thanks so much for sharing this DIY! I really want to do this in my room! But i feel that would be silly, haha maybe i will, i don't know! But i do appreciate you sharing your DIY and Nick's handy skills! In real life they seriously look like he welded metal and pieced together this art!!

Hi Danni! I have a 12 year old who won't sleep in his room without a light on. Too much scary movies I guess. Do you think this would be safe to be left on over night? I would just do his name or maybe his initials. Thanks for this awesome DIY. Btw love your blog :)

@The Rabbit75 - yes! We leave these on all day and they are just fine! :) We tested it for a long period of time (afraid the lights may melt the paint or something) but it is totally fine! The bulbs don't really get hot, just warm. Thanks for reading!

wow, this is so great! i made a similar thing years ago with soda and beer cans with one end cut off, and taping them together with electrical tape. this looks much sturdier. (and you'll get carboard-cuts on your hands instead of aluminum cuts) ;)

I loved your tutorial!! What an awesome idea! I made 2 marquee letters and posted it on my blog www.wandernvintage.com. While I was screwing in the light bulbs to the card board I started to wonder how safe it is? I am guessing you haven't experienced any problems?

I love this! We are going to decorate our finished basement in a "movie" theme so I've been looking for a marquee tutorial. I would love a better explanation of how you actually hung them and hid the cords - also do you see the cords connecting each letter?

I'm interested in doing something like this for a storefront window display on a timer. How do you feel these would fair being lit for a few hours? I'm worried about the heat from the light bulbs against the spray painted cardboard.